Meetings

We have a project meeting twice a month on Tuesday at 17:00 UTC in the #themereview channel on Slack. Second Tuesday in the month is open floor and the fourth Tuesday is with a fixed agenda. Tuesday at 17:00 UTC.

Agenda for 2017 January 31

Demo & starter content

In December we discussed what restrictions we wanted to apply to demo and starter content but in the last meeting we discovered that some of the ideas could be improved on. @poena has put a doc together to help list all of the pain points that we would like to improve. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m8h9cTMlAq5xsDfWvvclsI54Pk_k0FB6kQVQbgIMZoA/edit?usp=sharing

Priority queue

Priority queue for theme authors who have had less than 5 issues in their last theme review and they would be removed if they have more than 5 issues in a review. The number of theme authors on the list may be small in the beginning but this will be a goal for theme authors to work to and provide additional motivation to make sure the themes are up to standard.

A meta ticket #meta-2456 has been created. What we need now is a list of theme authors who have had less than 5 issues in their last theme review. Please post the candidates in the comments with a link to the last theme ticket.

iframe

We are working on a Sniff to check for iframes. iframes can be a security risk as they can include content from other sites which can be malicious. The question that to be put up for discussion is: Do we want to create a whitelist of URLs that people are allowed to use for iframes? iframes can be used for embedding videos either as demo content or documentation. Are these valid use cases? Are there any other valid use cases?

Regarding the demo content I would like us to focus less on removing demo content (and leaving areas empty) and more on replacing it with existing content or helpful setup instructions (this goes hand in hand with limiting content creation).

There are some suggestions for wording the actual requirement:Themes are not allowed to display placeholder content on the user’s site. Placeholder content is anything that is shown that you cannot pull from the user’s install.

Use existing content or instructions instead of placeholder content.
Placeholder content is anything that is shown that you cannot pull from the user’s install. Instructions should only show to users with the correct capabilities.

We would also need to add it to the Explanations and Examples page.

Regarding the starter content I would like to see more authors and reviewers try it out. We see questions in slack whether authors can use their own stater content or not, but we haven’t seen many authors pushing the limits of what can be done with the existing starter content. If we don’t use it and test it, we won’t know how to expand and improve it.
The starter content will eventually work on existing installs, so I strongly suggest that you try it out.
Related https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/38624

Have you used the starter content in your (live) theme?, please reply with an example.

As for starter content, the existing content is too limited and I would really like to see a statistic on how many websites are fresh installs. I would say not many, making the feature “ineffective” if we also add the current requirements.

I would like to propose that authors that get into the priority queue do at least 2 theme reviews/month. I am not against a higher number (I actually think it would be better, maybe 1 review/week), we could vote if you think this idea is good.

Also, I think child themes should not be considered for application in this program (not saying you can’t submit child themes in this queue, just that you can’t apply for it using a child theme ticket).

I think this has been discussion many times before. You can’t force theme authors to review. If you have time and resources to perform reviews, that’s awesome, but I think it wouldn’t be a good idea to punish other authors who submit themes that would easily pass the review without hassle who don’t have time to review and contribute in other ways.

It’s a trusted author queue to encourage authors to carefully review their code before submitting themes, not a trusted reviewer queue. The main issue with the queue is that people submit themes that are full of issues and this leads to a lengthy review process.

I also think it’s not your call what people do with their time. You know people have jobs, run businesses, have families, have a live and for some people 2 hours of spare time actually is valuable as it’s all that is left.

Again, if you have time to contribute reviewing themes, then that’s really awesome and I think anyone is thankful for that. But please don’t make your own situation a requirement for other authors, that would be nice.

With regards to the priority queue concept made in the meeting today (I logged in this afternoon and read the whole meeting), you will alienate more authors, old and new and it just keeps adding rediculous rules and ideas to the whole process of submitting themes to .org, so here here is my recommendation, again:

I still say my suggestion to close the submissions is the way to go with dealing with the queue. You don’t try to keep plugging the holes in a sinking boat that is out on the ocean trying to stay afloat. You put it into dry-dock and fix it. When all holes are fixed and everything is done right, you relaunch the boat….no band-aid or temporary solutions. What I am saying here is that the review and queue is an absolute mess, and without saying who is to blame, let’s say everyone shares it, including authors.

The idea is to close submissions down and then reviewers go through the queue and clear it; this includes the Admin queue too. During this time, the TRT comes up with a set of realistic rules/guidelines that make sense, are fair, and done in a way not to tick off (putting it mildly) theme authors or scare away new ones. When the submissions are re-established, authors will be following the new guidelines and reviewers will stay on top of things and not let the queue get crazy huge again. A nice fresh start.

I remember it was about 2 years ago the time from submission to release of a theme was like 6 weeks. Then, in less than 1.5 yrs, it’s now 7-8 months! It’s still around 6 months and here we are in 2017. I’ve been submitting themes to .org for almost 7 years, and I’m stunned to see where things are right now.

That’s my rant, but again, I still say shut down the submissions, clear the queue, get things in place, and then reopen for a new era of theme submissions.